Various types of games played on the basis of the random selection of numbers are well-known in the art. Some of these games are bingo, keno, etc. In recent years government entities have entered the field with lotteries which depend on the selection of several numbers to win various monetary prizes and the like. A lottery player must select the numbers he wishes to bet and after paying for playing the game, the player hopes that the selected series of numbers will be selected as a winner or to proceed to the next stage of the game or winning a prize. It is difficult to determine which numbers should be selected as a possible winning number. It would therefore appear that there is a present need for a simple, inexpensive device to be used for selecting the data or numbers to be used in such games of chance.
California is one of the states that have recently introduced a lottery. Machines have been devised for selecting numbers to be used in the lottery. These machines are relatively expensive, and the players have substantially reduced their dependence on such machines in selecting the "lucky" numbers to be used in the lotteries. U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,702 discloses a device for selecting numbers for games of chance, such as the lotteries. This device comprises of a storage container for numbered balls that permits the balls to fall into a transparent tube for identifying the numbers on the balls as a means of selecting the numbers to be used for playing a lottery. The discharged balls may be restored in the container by moving the tube storing the balls from a dispensing position into a discharge orientation within the container so that they may fall back into the storage container.
Devices for dispensing articles such as pills, one at a time, are also known in the art. In U.S. Pat. No. 2,633,273 a dispensing cap for pill containers is disclosed. The pills are dispensed through an opening in the top plate of the cap into a cavity in a lower plate. The cavity, with the pill inside, is then rotated to a position where it lines up with an outside aperture from which the pill is dispensed. The cavity is rotated back to the original position to retrieve another pill to be dispensed, and the process is repeated.
Other well-known devices have been utilized for dispensing objects, one at a time, such as gum ball machines. Two such gum ball machines are found in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,475,730 and 3,810,535. The devices disclosed in the aforementioned gum ball machine patents each utilize a circular plate with a plurality of circular openings to transfer held objects from an opening in an exterior plate to an interior opening. In these gum ball machines, however, the devices move in only one direction whereby the discharged gum balls are not restored within the machine for obvious reasons.